Case Study: Beating C. diff using education, hand hygiene, and robots

The three steps an Oklahoma hospital used to bring its C. diff rate to zero 

Using a multifaceted approach, Stillwater (Oklahoma) Medical Center was able to beat one of the most frequently reported healthcare-associated infections. The 177-bed facility hasn’t seen a single hospital-acquired case of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) since October 2017. Annually, C. diff infections affect around half a million people and play a role in 29,000 deaths. 

Necia Kimber, RN, CIC, MHA, infection control practitioner at Stillwater Medical, says that while her facility’s infection rates weren’t above the national average, she still wanted to reduce the bioburden—particularly of C. diff, MRSA, VRE, and CRE—within the hospital. 

"We didn't have a high rate that made me say, ‘Oh, my goodness!' It was just wanting to do overall good and making sure we were doing the best we could," she says. "This is the hospital I'm going to bring my family to and I want to provide the best care for anybody who walks through that door."

Here are three ways Kimber achieved lower infection rates at Stillwater Medical Center:

Education

Kimber spearheaded an antimicrobial stewardship program at the facility in 2017. There was also assessment of and education regarding ordering of C. diff testing.

"[As healthcare professionals], when you have a patient and you can't find anything with normal testing, we tend to expound our testing," she says. "Sometimes it would end up hurting us with pay-for-performance—if [the patient] tested positive for [C. diff, it] didn't mean they were actually infected with it. They can just be colonized with it."

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